The present invention relates to the field of digital scanning systems, and more particularly to a system and method for installing, configuring and operating a digital scanner.
Digital scanners are commonly used to digitize documents for use in home and office computer systems. Although the physical characteristics of scanners vary, the initial setup and basic operation of many scanners is essentially the same. Initially, the user connects the scanner to a computer and installs scanner software that is provided with the scanner on one or more diskettes. The user then launches the scanner software, for example, by clicking an icon that represents the scanner software, by typing a command to invoke the software or, in some scanners, by presenting a document to be scanned to the scan head where the document is sensed and the scanning device signals the computer to invoke the scanner software.
Many popular imaging and document processing software applications are equipped with a TWAIN interface capable of interacting with a TWAIN data source supplied by a hardware vendor. Through selection of the appropriate data source and invocation thereof, a user is able to scan an image directly into a target application program.
When executed, the scanner software typically prompts the user to indicate the type of document to scan (e.g., text or picture). After the user indicates the type of document to scan, the user is then prompted to enter scan parameters for the scanning operation. For example, if a picture is to be scanned, the user is usually prompted to indicate whether the picture is a color image, shaded image (i.e., a grayscale image) or a purely black and white image (sometimes called a line drawing). The user may also be prompted to indicate a desired resolution for the scanned image. If a text scan is indicated by the user, the user may be prompted to enter scan parameters such as the size and quality of the text, whether to maintain the scanned text in columns and so forth.
Ergo, for many scanning devices, the user needs to complete a series of tasks to be able to achieve the goal of acquiring an image. Using at least one embodiment of the present invention, a user may achieve the acquisition of an image by simply hooking up scanner hardware, installing scanner software and pressing a button intuitively placed on the scanner itself.
A method and apparatus for scanning a document are disclosed. A request is received to generate a digitized representation of a document. Previously stored configuration information is inspected to identify an application program associated with the request and a scan setting associated with the application program. The digitized representation of the document is generated according to the scan setting.
Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the accompanying drawings and from the detailed description that follows below.